This article contains spoilers for Squid Game season 3.All Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) wanted to do was save lives.That is Player 456’s singular focus from the moment he wins the 33rd edition of the titular games in Squid Game season 1 and persists through the 36th edition of the games in season 2 and season 3. Though he could have easily absconded to Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged daughter, Gi-hun uses his ₩45.6 billion prize winnings to establish a sophisticated surveillance apparatus to find the mysterious Recruiter (Gong Yoo) and infiltrate the contest. Upon donning his “456” green tracksuit once again, Gi-hun does whatever he can to convince his competitors that he’s “PLAYED THESE GAMES BEFORE!” and that they really need to listen to him to save their own skins.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Of course, humans are … well, humans are complicated and none of Gi-hun’s fellow humans heed his warning. The candidate pool of lives to be saved shrinks from round to round as the piggy bank prize pot grows. By the time the Squid Game competitors respond to the introduction of a literal infant as Player 222 into the game with murderous rage, Gi-hun knows he has to switch tactics. He was never going to be able to save everyone and perhaps not even most of them. The best he can do now is to save someone. So he does exactly that, making it to the very last round of the games once again and sacrificing himself to save the most vulnerable soul.And that’s why Squid Game has a happy ending! OK, that’s obviously not quite true. As we mentioned in our season 3 review, Squid Game is one of the most intensely dark and cynical pieces of popular mass media ever produced. No story boasting close to a 99.8% morality rate could ever end “happily.” Still, that doesn’t mean it can’t end with at least some semblance of victory or hope.Whether the dumbass VIPs who watch these deadly games realize it or not, Seong Gi-hun won the 36th Squid Game competition. Sure, his name won’t go down in the ledger of winners and his next of kin won’t receive any additional prize winnings (beyond his 2021 purse, of course) but he won them all the same. That’s because he did the one thing that the game is designed specifically to discourage: he made a sacrifice.Time and time again in Squid Game, players are given the opportunity to make the selfless choice – from offering mercy to a wounded opponent to voting to end the contest altogether – and every time they balk at the chance. This is not because they are bad people. It’s because they’re simply people. The same circumstances that made them desperate enough to enter the games in the first place persist throughout and make them desperate enough to continue. The game’s creators, now represented by Front Man Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), understand that dynamic and design the games to exploit it. It’s not enough for a rich VIP to torture some poor wretch. They could do that in the privacy of their own mansion. What’s truly satisfying to them is to put on a grand, expensive production in which people are prompted to torture themselves.Gi-hun’s sacrifice, however, breaks that kayfabe. He opts out. He doesn’t play the game. And for that, he “wins” even as he dies. The Front Man, who like Player 456 has also “PLAYED THESE GAMES” immediately understands the impact of Gi-hun’s choice in a way that the other observing VIPs don’t. As the arrival of the Coast Guard triggers an evacuation sequence, Hwang In-ho goes through the motions, a defeated man. He barely even responds as his brother Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) appears and trains a rifle on him. Instead he silently exits the island, “winner” 222 in tow, and heads off to safety.Later on he takes the extraordinary measure of breaking into Seong Gi-hun’s motel hideout and stealing what remains of his original ₩45.6 billion to gift to his surviving family in Los Angeles. This is almost certainly not standard operating procedure for Squid Games. Surely, the Front Man’s responsibilities don’t extend to finding the next of kin for every former winner and delivering them in a bespoke Squid Game-branded box upon their passing. This seems very much like a freelance operation and it’s an acknowledgement that something has changed here.Seong Gi-hun not only “won” the 36th edition of Squid Game, he introduced doubt into the system that could one day provide kindling for the games’ ultimate demise. After all, the number of folks who are aware of the games existence and are invested in their destruction has now grown from roughly one (Jun-ho) to many (Park Gyu-young’s Pink Guard 011 No-Eul, Jun Suk-ho’s Woo-seok, Lee Jin-uk’s Player 246 Gyeong-seok, and presumably Player 222 herself eventually). That’s not enough to mark the end of the games, but it just might mark the beginning of the end of them.The only question now, however, is if Netflix will ever let that end arrive. The streamer, bless it, has been accommodating and patient about allowing Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to refer to season 3 as the ultimate end of the story. Because it is for him. Give or take a prequel or two years down the line, Hwang has expressed that season 3 represents the conclusion to this saga even as a glance at Netflix’s earnings results reveals there’s no way that that can be the case. The presence of a certain Hollywood megastar in season 3’s final scene makes that extra clear.Interestingly though, the gobsmacking inclusion of Cate Blanchett as a new recruiter in the final moments of season 3 appears to have been a Hwang-led choice and not a Netflix one, with the writer/director telling The Hollywood Reporter:“I didn’t end it on that note in order to deliberately leave room for further stories to happen. Gi-hun and Front Man, through these characters, the Games in Korea have ended. And because this story started out with me wanting to tackle issues about the limitless competition and the system that’s created in late capitalism, I wanted to leave it on a note highlighting the fact that these systems, even if one comes down, it’s not easy to dismantle the whole system — it will always repeat itself. That’s why I wanted to end it with an American recruiter. And I wrote that scene wanting an impactful ending for the show, not in order to open rooms for anything else.”The presence of a recruiter in Los Angeles presumably recruiting for an American Squid Game doesn’t immediately repudiate Gi-hun’s victory. As Hwang himself says “it’s not easy to dismantle the whole system.” Gi-hun’s sacrifice won’t immediately bring the games to a halt. Hopefully, however, it will be the opening salvo in a grander political awakening that will one day take down that system. Maybe a contestant in the Cate Blanchett games will pick up the torch and continue the mission. Or maybe they won’t. What matters in the moment of Squid Game‘s ending is that the games’ demise is a distinct possibility for the viewer to dream upon.But of course, the rest of the story won’t reside in the viewer’s imagination forever. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow there will be more Squid Game on the way. Even if Cate Blanchett doesn’t make her way into David Fincher’s rumored American Squid Game, there will be an American Squid Game and that will undoubtedly be followed by titles like Squid Game: London, Squid Game: Paris, Squid Game: Tokyo, and gods knows what else.Squid Game going global coincides with the series’ themes nicely. After all, it’s not like the vagaries of modern capitalism are isolated only to Seoul. At the same time, however, Seong Gi-hun’s sacrifice will become more and more diluted as fresh iterations of Squid Game arrive without a clear ending in sight. Perhaps that was always the fate of a global phenomenon on a streaming service. For now though, the show’s ending works and Gi-hun’s sacrifice matters. Let’s try to remember it while we can. All six episodes of Squid Game season 3 are available to stream on Netflix now. The post Squid Game Season 3 Has a Perfect Ending…For Now appeared first on Den of Geek.